IC News

Growing up just a few minutes from War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo, Therese Forton-Barnes ’85 has memories of attending Bills games at the stadium affectionately known as “The Rockpile” with her parents and younger brother.

“My father would take my mother for the first half, drive home and pick us up at halftime, and bring us back for the second half,” she recalled. “Those were great memories.”

Forton-Barnes’ love of the Bills has only grown in the ensuing decades. And though the team isn’t short of diehard fans, few others have made such an impact in the Buffalo community. The intersection of these two worlds is why Forton-Barnes was selected as the Bills’ representative in the NFL’s 2025 Fan of the Year Contest.

The partnership with Stich Buffalo isn’t the only way Forton-Barnes—who is a also former board president of the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame—and the club give back to their hometown. They financially contribute to the Buffalo Zoo's American Bison exhibit, which she called “a natural fit” and have a Gear for Good campaign, where fans can donate their new or lightly used Bills gear to those less fortunate.

Forton-Barnes has also made a name for herself as an event planner in Buffalo. She estimates she’s planned more than 700 events, including many for organizations such as Make-a-Wish and local cancer charities.

Unsurprisingly, it was her love of the Bills that opened the door for her career after she graduated from IC.

“I studied business at Ithaca,” she said. “I was working in a stock brokerage firm and knew it wasn’t for me. But this was right around the time the event and party planning industry was taking off, so I got a job at a local company. Unfortunately, I was laid off.”

Forton-Barnes’ reputation was so strong, however, that many of the clients she was working with at the company chose to stay with her after she was let go. So she started her own company.

“Then one day, my father says to me ‘Hey [Bills starting quarterback] Jim Kelly is doing a lot of events, you should write to him and see if you two can work together,” she recalled. “I found his agent’s name and wrote him a letter. The agent called me back and asked if I wanted to help organize Kelly’s annual golf tournament.”

Forton-Barnes began putting on events with the Bills’ star quarterback, a partnership that gave her cachet and legitimacy in Buffalo as she grew her business.

Though she does a variety of event work, it’s her partnership with Buffalo athletes that holds a special place in her heart. In 1996, she planned Kelly’s wedding. She also helped Ryan Miller, former goalie for the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres—for whom her brother Jerry is an Assistant General Manager—start his charity, the Steadfast Foundation

“I became a go-to person if they had something they needed,” she said. “I knew their personalities, so I had a knack for knowing what they wanted, and I’m not star struck around athletes.”

That’s not entirely true. Forton Barnes joked that the thing that clinched her decision to enroll at Ithaca was a poster she saw during a campus visit adorned with a picture of a “really cute boy” who happened to be a member of the football team (though on the poster he was holding, ironically, a lacrosse stick).

Still, she knows how to maintain her professionalism around some of Buffalo’s most famous athletes. And her decades of work—coupled with her Bills fandom—has brought her recognition from the NFL.

“I hold this nomination in the deepest part of my heart, and I’m honored to receive it,” she said. “But I don’t do the things I do for a pat on the back. I just love giving back to my community.”